Sexton on track to be fit to face Scots as Farrell sets Ireland sights high
Ireland captain Johnny Sexton expects to be fit to lead his country into a new era under head coach Andy Farrell, which start sat home to Scotland a week on Saturday.
Talismanic stand-off Sexton’ s participation in the Guinness Six Nations had been in doubt due to a knee injury suffered playing for Leinster in early December.
With back-up Joey Carbery out of the tournament, that left the Irish sweating over the pivot al play maker position but the 34- year-old, who has 88 caps for Ireland and played six Lions Tests, is “ahead of schedule” in his recover y and should take par tina training session today in Portugal ahead of the tournament opener against the Scots.
“Ever ything’s been going to plan, so hopefully I can take full part in training [on Thursday],” said Sexton at yesterday’ s Six Nations launch in Ireland.
“If anything a little bit ahead of schedule and if everything goes smoothly over the next few days, I should be fine and available for selection next week.”
Sex ton was last week named successor to retired former skip per Rory Best when Farrell announced his 36 -man squad for the championship.
Sex ton was proud to be selected for the role but accepts, at his stage of career, it may only be a short-term appointment.
“I think everyone would want to be captain but it’s about someone wanting you to do it,” he said. “That’s the biggest honour you can be asked to do and it meant a lot that Andy asked me to do it, that he thought I was the one to lead us for ward into this campaign. It’s obviously a campaign-by-campaign thing at the moment and we’ll see how we go.”
With seemingly positive news on Sexton’s availability, Farrell is now waiting on the fitness of Jordan Larmour. The Le inst er wing sustained a foot injury during Saturday’s Champions Cup win at Benetton.
“We met up [on Tuesday] and had a bit of a walkthrough so he was able to partake in that,” Farrell said.
“We’ll have to take it day by day. We don’t think it’s anything to o serious but how that’s going to play out in the next few days, we’ll have to wait and see.”
After a difficult 2019 which included a disappointing Six Nations campaign and defeat in the World Cup quarter-finals, Ireland are rebuilding under Farrell.
The 44- year-old, who stepped up from defence coach to succeed Joe Schmidt, believes patience will be required during the transitional phase but admits results remain of paramount importance and wants his squad to hit the ground running.
Asked what he hoped to achieve in the forth coming tournament, he replied: “Progressing our game, winning – it matters, we won’t shy away from that. If I told Johnny that he’s going into a game to play second fiddle and come away with a loss, he’d think I’d gone mad.
“We want to win but at the same time we want to develop our game and keep on improving. Certain aspects will take a little bit of time.”